Materials for Inspectors

Pairwork

Learning a language takes practice; lots of practice. In classroom where the teacher talks most of the time, it's difficult for students to get enough practice to make progress. One solution to this is giving students more time to talk. If you look at the calculation below, you can see how important this is.

If teachers talk 80% of the time, students talk 20% of the time.

At this rate, in a 60 minute class, the teacher talks for 48 minutes and the students talk for 12 minutes

In a class of 30 students, each student has only 24 seconds to practice speaking English.

In a class of 15 students, each student has only 48 seconds to practice speaking English.

In a class of 5 students, each student has only 144 seconds to practice speaking English.

If you want to see some examples of pairwork activities, please click on these words: Pairwork Activities

If you want to read something about the importance of doing pairwork, please click on the attachment, "Why do pairwork" in blue below.